Other Notable Deaths

OTHER NOTABLE DEATHS

Victor Rabinowitz, a lawyer who represented leftist causes and clients such as Alger Hiss, the Black Panthers, Fidel Castro and Weather Underground member Kathy Boudin, has died.

Mr. Rabinowitz died Friday at his Manhattan home, his longtime law partner, Michael Krinsky, said Tuesday.

In a 1996 memoir, Unrepentant Leftist, Mr. Rabinowitz said that he had been a member of the American Communist Party from 1942 until the early 1960s because it seemed the best way to fight for social justice.

Mr. Rabinowitz was the last attorney for Hiss, the American diplomat accused of spying for the Soviet Union and ultimately convicted of perjury in 1950 in one of the postwar era's most famous espionage cases.

He began his career at the firm of Louis Boudin, who was involved in radical politics. Mr. Rabinowitz opened his practice in 1944, and Mr. Boudin's nephew, Leonard Boudin, joined him three years later. They worked together until 1989.

In 1960, Mr. Rabinowitz's firm was hired by Mr. Castro to defend the Cuban government's nationalization of U.S.-owned property. Mr. Rabinowitz won by arguing that U.S. courts should not question the internal affairs of other countries.

IAN SMITH, 88 Prime minister of Rhodesia

Ian Smith, Rhodesia's last white prime minister whose attempts to resist black rule dragged the country now known as Zimbabwe into isolation and civil war, has died.

Mr. Smith, who recently suffered a stroke, died Tuesday at a clinic near Cape Town, South Africa, where he spent his final years with his family, said longtime friend Sam Whaley, who was a senator in the former Rhodesia.

Mr. Smith unilaterally declared independence from Britain on Nov. 11, 1965. He then served as the prime minister of Rhodesia from 1965 to 1979 during white minority rule. The country failed to gain international recognition, and the U.N. imposed economic sanctions. Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party won elections in 1980.

Despite their bitter differences, Mr. Smith and Mr. Mugabe shared one common bond -- their deep dislike of Britain, which they saw as a meddling colonial power.

Mr. Smith was born to Scottish immigrants in Rhodesia on April 8, 1919, but renounced his British citizenship in 1984.